Friday, 8 January 2016

It's the New Year, so we thought we'd give our blog a little revamp!

Every month we're going to focus on one yarn and give you lots of inspiration and ideas for what to make with it. This month (as you might have guessed from the title), we're focusing on our newest yarn, CoopKnits Socks Yeah!

This fab new sock yarn with a gorgeous palette of 10 colours is designed by Rachel Coopey of the aforementioned CoopKnits.

If anyone knows what makes a good pair of socks, it's Rachel, so naturally her first yarn should be a sock yarn :D

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If like us, you're a fan of Rachel's sock patterns, you'll know just how much attention to detail she puts into her designs and this yarn is no different. Having seen her carefully pick out a range of colours before narrowing them down to the perfect palette of ten shades, we can certainly back that up!

There are cool and warm shades to suit anyone and so many colour combinations to play with!

Socks Yeah! balances out the most important properties of a sock yarn perfectly, with Superwash Merino for softness and easy washing and Nylon for strength.

But it's not just for socks! It makes beautiful accessories and garments too. Rachel has even tried it out with crochet, making these pretty motifs to decorate her studio!

Socks Yeah! looks great crocheted too :)

We had a play around with some different stitches to see how they'd knit up, lace cables, twisted sts and colour work and a bit of crochet too.

This yarn is such an all rounder, after making a range of swatches using different techniques I can confidently say that it would work just as well in the delicate pretty stitches of a lacy shawl as it would in a cosy pair of socks or that favourite sweater you'll wear to death.

I wet blocked all the swatches, rolling them in a towel to get rid of the excess water and then pinning them out to dry (I stretched out the lace swatch, but none of the others).

For the lace sample, I used #104/Sphene and 3mm needles to give a slightly more open fabric, but I used 2.5mm for all the others. The lace fabric drapes really nicely on these slightly larger needles, but you could use a larger size still if you wanted. Even only going up a couple of needle sizes given the fabric a lovely drape when blocked.

I'm particularly pleased with the way the yarn works in stranded colour work (using shades #105/Danburite and #102/Ammolite), I find keeping an even tension in fair isle patterns can be tricky on little pieces and small needles, but the stitches stick to each other nicely and really keep the fabric neat.

The slip stitch cabled swatch (shown in #102/Ammolite) has really nice stitch definition in both the cables and the columns of twisted sts between them.

I love the way the colours in the range work together too, the fact that each shade is slightly heathered makes the transitions between the shades a little softer as you can see in this little crocheted square; worked on a 2.5mm hook in shades (from the centre out) #106/Kunzite, #105/Danburite, #102 Ammolite and #107/Beryl.